October Trading Journals

Think about it, say you make 100K and pay 60K is in commissions with the 98% deal, you get almost all of it and that's 40K. The second deal your commission is cut in half so you have 70K left, but when you multiply it by 58% it is about the same.

Of course, as you get better you will improve your efficiency and starts to pay less in commissions, so the first deal is far superior.

Although the first deal is better, the question remains whether you can improve the commission your first deal or the payout of second deal. As both can be improved as you gain experience.
 
Hitman,

What do you think is the max line a really good daytrader can handle effectively? What do the big hitters at your shop run? If you had pretty much an unlimited account, what would you do differently?
 
I can trade up to 3000 shares per position regardless of the stock, but I haven't done a single position of such size yet, because mentally I am not there.

The big size people generally do 5-10K positions and for super liquid names they may do bigger. It takes a lot of time to absorb size and upping my size has always been a problem.

Never assume if your account is twice the size it is now you can make twice the gain, it doesn't work that way. It takes a lot of skill to handle 10K positions properly.
 
ttrcrep,

Does Tony describe his scans in detail in any of his books?

The only book he goes into detail on his scan parameters is his first full book called Stock Trading Wizard. His second full book (which Hitman keeps calling his 1st book) called The Stock Trader doesn't go into any detail on his scans, although it's a great book for the reasons Hitman mentions. Neither does his new book go into detail on his scans. BTW, I keep referring to the above as "full" books because Tony also had a wonderful little mini-book in 1999 called Building Blocks for Successful Day Trading.
 
Gift energy run this morning as I sealed my first four digit game in a while. Wish I cranked my size up but as it is I can't really complain. 4200 shares on 5 of 6 shooting, +1458 before commissions, +1292 after, 1 bullet.

The custom index (basket) feature in First Alert is useful but broken. For some reason I can not historical intraday chart to calculate, and every time I restart the program whatever data collected in intraday basket is gone. The charting software in this program is nowhere near as good as AT Financial. Let's just put it this way, get Tradestation and skip this mess. It is slow, it requires itself to be on all the times, if I have a few more day's like this I may just get Tradestation myself.

Pre-Market: BHI beat earnings (OSX, but it is not a big cap at all)

9:30: Watched energy up a little and I took a little NE at 31.37, at first I really thought it was another trap as NE quickly sold off to 31.05, I was ready to get out of my 500 shares at 31 and I even put up a bullet on DO and sold some short at 28.69. All of a sudden futures started going off like mad but the real strength was in energy, big prints went off and I scored more than 1.5 point in NE (in the end he printed 33.40 and I saw a few large oil stocks downticking, I sold market a little too late and I was filled at 33). Too bad I never had a chance to pyramid. Covered DO in time for a 21 cents loss too bad I didn't flip in time, and missed the fill on SGY. Gas went straight up and I took some EPG, for a half point move. Tony's 3 day reversal showed up on my filter, took HDI at 47.13 and it printed 48! Pared out half there held the other half but it fell like a rock and triggered my stop at 47.06. The truth with those scans is if it doesn't work as expected off the open it probably won't work. Still, it was the first time I took serious size (600 shares in this case) in his scan and actually made money off it, felt good.

10:30: Bulleted DO on inevitable OSX pullback and got a few 20-30 cents scalps on small shares. Futures turning choppy, I waited.

12:00: CEX strength and I took PPG for a 20 cents scalp, wish I held but I have no patience to hold stuff through the dead zone. LMT showed up on a 20 day breakout with good volume and I tried playing it but it had news today and was really choppy, out for flat. I liked my numbers so I stopped early.

Finished this week with $2500 and finally I am having a respectable month again, up $7K with 3 games left, I am looking for a breakout.
 
The third week of October was my BEST ever in the stock market. On Wed., I made more money than I have in any other trading week or even month. I had a Million dollar day :)

This last week was the worst week I ever had in the market. I gave back almost half of what I made on great Wed (wasn't that a movie). I am taking off. I need a break after this week. I got very careless and traded against the market. And the futures trading I started last week was a BIG BIG BIG mistake.

This is the thing with trading big size and using leverage. You can make a lot of money, and you can get kill on a draw-down.

Bill
 
Originally posted by Sniper_Trader1
The third week of October was my BEST ever in the stock market. On Wed., I made more money than I have in any other trading week or even month. I had a Million dollar day :)

This last week was the worst week I ever had in the market. I gave back almost half of what I made on great Wed (wasn't that a movie). I am taking off. I need a break after this week. I got very careless and traded against the market. And the futures trading I started last week was a BIG BIG BIG mistake.

This is the thing with trading big size and using leverage. You can make a lot of money, and you can get kill on a draw-down.

Bill
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Wow, thats quite some size you are trading there sniper. I'm wondering what its like emotionally to gain and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Could you maybe go into what it feels like to trade with such size?
 
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